Elia Kazan | On the Waterfront / 1954

somebody

by Douglas Messerli

 

Budd Schulberg (screenplay, based, in part, by articles by Malcolm Johnson), Elia Kazan (director) On the Waterfront / 1954

 

     The same year that The Pajama Game opened on Broadway, Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront premiered in movie houses; the two could not be more different in how they deal with the subject workers and unions. Whereas in The Pajama Game the local union, completely controlled by the local workers, successfully serves their concerns, writer Budd Schulberg's reportage of the International Longshoreman's Association, run by the mob (in New York the infamous Genovese family) argues that they rob union funds while demanding complete fealty and further financial extortion from the workers.

 

    The film, based on newspapers stories written by Malcolm Johnson in the New York Sun, begins with a somewhat dim-witted but gentle tough, Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando), playing lackey to the gangster union boss Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb) who orders him to lure a young dockworker, Joey Doyle, to his apartment rooftop. Doyle has evidently informed on union workers to a new Crime Commission committee, and Johnny wants him killed. The unsuspecting Molloy (who presumes Friendly's henchmen will only rough him up) does what he's told, inviting Doyle, himself a bird lover, to inspect his rooftop pigeons. In shock, Terry witnesses Doyle's murder as he is hurled to the street below.

     From that moment on, Elia Kazan's film takes its subject by the teeth and refuses to let go. No matter what one thinks about Kazan—most of my older Hollywood friends have refused to speak to or even of him since 1952 when he served as a friendly witness before the House on un-American Activities—there is no question that On the Waterfront is a powerful and mesmerizing film, with brilliant performances by Brando, Karl Malden, Rod Steiger, and Eva Marie Saint and an original score by Leonard Bernstein. The film won eight Academy Awards, including the Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director, and is listed on the American Film Institute's list of most memorable movies.

     It is useful to realize, however, that no matter how factual Schulberg and Kazan's film was (and there is every reason to believe that they correctly portrayed the brutality of the New York shipping docks) Kazan's intention was to create a kind of allegory for his own position before McCarthy and others. The original screenplay, "The Hook," was by Arthur Miller (who refused to name names before the HUAC committee), but he was replaced by Schulberg (who, like Kazan, testified as a friendly witness before the committee). Pressure from the HUAC committee wanted the mob villains to also be Communists, but fortunately Schulberg did not defer to their wishes. Nonetheless, Kazan's film, with its emphasis on those who refuse to speak up against the mob, his obvious disdain for those who remain "Deaf and Dumb (D & D)," was clearly a statement against the criticism he had received for speaking out at HUAC. *

     Most of On the Waterfront, accordingly is devoted to the long struggle by Father Barry (Karl Malden) and Joey Doyle's sister, Edie (Eva Marie Saint), with whom Terry gradually falls in love, to convince Terry to come clean and report what he has seen to the Crime Commission. When the mob begins to suspect that Terry might squeal, they order him killed, unless Terry's older brother Charley—deeply involved in the Union mob—can convince him to remain silent. Through conversations with Edie and Father Barry, Terry gradually begins to understand the difference between survival and hope, as he develops a new set of moral values which reach back into his own past.

    In what is one of the most heart-wrenching scenes in the film, Charley literally takes his brother "on a ride," trying to force Terry to understand the danger of his potential acts. As they discuss Terry's past career as a boxer, Terry admits that is has very little offer in his current life. But whereas Charley blames his brother's manager ("That skunk we got you for a manager, he brought you along too fast"), Terry suddenly blurts out the truth:

 

                    It wasn't him, Charley! It was you. You remember that night in the Garden,

                    you came down to my dressing room and said: 'Kid, this ain't your

                    night. We're going for the price on Wilson.' You remember that? 'This

                    ain't your night!' My night! I coulda taken Wilson apart! So what happens?

                    He gets the title shot outdoors in the ball park—and whadda I get? A

                    one-way ticket to Palookaville.

 

Their final interchange represents Terry's transformation from dim-witted lackey to a man of growing wisdom and moral integrity:

 

                   Terry: You was my brother, Charley. You shoulda looked out of me

                        a little bit. You shoulda taken care of me—just a little—so I wouldn't

                        have to take them dives for the short-end money.

                   Charley: I had some bets down for you. You saw some money.

                   Terry (yelling and heartbroken): You don't understand! I coulda had

                        class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead

                        of a bum, which is what I am. Let's face it [pause]....It was you, Charley.

 

With such an intense scene between brothers, Kazan needs to say little about the union Charley represents. The relationship between the workers and the union is played out in On the Waterfront in terms of sibling betrayal, saving the director from having to focus on the deeper issues concerning the relationship between the two forces.

     Obviously, Terry must die! And in Schulberg's original script that was to have been his fate. But Kazan would then have been without a hero to give evidence to his righteous act of testifying. In the final film Terry battles Friendly directly through a kind of end-all fighting bout; he is nearly killed by the union henchmen, but, once Terry is helped literally to stand, his supporters in pietà-like formation, he refuses to give in, weaving and lunging forward, a working man's Christ as he moves into the maw of the ship, Friendly shouting after like some angry schoolyard bully who has temporarily lost his powers. The cinematic myth Kazan has created is perhaps more powerful than Schulberg's original political commentary.

 

 *It's interesting that Miller went on to write two works that told a different story of behavior regarding public testimony: A View from the Bridge, about the family loyalty of Italian immigrants, and The Crucible, about the Salem witchcraft trials and the related testimony of young girls and others against the so-called witches.

 

Los Angeles, October 14-17, 2009

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (October 2009), originally printed with reviews of On the Waterfront and Norma Rae as

     “It Comes with the Job.”

Reprinted from Reading Films: My International Cinema (Los Angeles: Green Integer, 2012).

George Abbott and Stanley Donen | The Pajama Game / 1957

union girl

by Douglas Messerli

 

George Abbott and Richard Bissell (screenplay, based on Bissell's novel 7 1/2¢ and the musical with music and lyrics by Richard Alder and Jerry Ross), George Abbott and Stanley Donen (directors) The Pajama Game / 1957

 

     The Pajama Game, based on Iowa writer Richard Bissell's 1952 novel 7 1/2 ¢ is a none too serious example of a workplace drama, and were there not a real battle between labor and management presented in this work, it might have floated off into a love comedy. The head of the Union Grievance Committee, Babe Williams (Doris Day)—despite her denials ("I'm Not At All in Love")—is clearly attracted to the new superintendent of the Sleep-Tite Pajama Factory, Sid Sorokin (John Raitt). But, as she later explains to him, she is a "Union girl," and resists his attentions precisely because she is afraid of what will come between them. Although it is a comic resistance—one that we immediately know will ultimately be overcome—there remains throughout the play a serious breach between management and labor that ends, temporarily, in their separation.

 

    A more comic series of characters buoy up these more serious issues facing the feuding lovers by mocking all love quarrels: Vernon Hines (Eddie Foy, Jr.), the factory timekeeper, is perpetually jealous of the woman he loves, Gladys Hotchkiss, (the great comic dancer Carol Haney) secretary to the head of the factory "Old Man" Hasler. That jealousy, combined with Hines' drinking and "skill" at throwing knives, a skit he is determined to perform at the annual employee picnic, creates its own fireworks, underlying the more serious battles between the superintendent and union representative. One of the best comic moments in the work, indeed, is played out by Sid's secretary, Mabel (the delectable Rita Shaw), and Hines, as she tries to cure him of his jealous behavior ("I'll Never Be Jealous Again"); that "cure," however, is short-lived, ultimately hinting at an even darker fears in the war between factory employees, culminates in the possibility of murder and death!

     As Sid and Babe fall deeper and deeper in love (helped along by songs such as "Small Talk" and "There Once Was a Man"), the war between the union and management threatens. Workers demand a raise most other such employees have received throughout the state of 7 1/2 cents, and as Hasler continues to resist, a slow-down is ordered. Outraged by their actions, Sid orders an "honest day's work," and as the slackers again speed up production, Babe jams the machinery. Sid has no choice but to fire his lover. His lonely fate is beautifully spelled out twice in the musical as he sings to himself into a Dictaphone ("Hey There").

    Meeting at Babe's house, several rebellious workers plan strategies to embarrass the company, mismatching sizes of pajamas, flimsily sewing on fly-buttons, etc. In order to correct the threatened mayhem, Sorokin becomes determined to see the financial records which the company head keeps carefully locked away from sight. Pretending to court Hasler's secretary Gladys—who by this time has dismissed her dangerous lover Hines—he meets her at the popular city night club, Hernando's Hideaway, with the attention of wheedling the key to the company records she keeps on a chain

around her neck.

     In fact, that key reveals another kind of "chain" around all the worker's necks. Sid discovers that Hasler has already raised the cost of his products to account for the 7 1/2 ¢ months before, refusing to grant the raise simply out of greed.

 

    The union rally is in progress where union leaders explain just what that raise of 7 1/2¢ will mean to the underpaid workers over a lifetime. But before the strike is declared, Sorokin arrives with Hasler in hand, having threatened to reveal Hasler's actions to the workers. The old man has no choice but to give in to Union demands. Sid is restored to a hero in Babe's mind. And everyone is suddenly off to celebrate at Hernando's where "All you see are silhouettes. / And all you hear are castanets. / And no one cares how late it gets," clearly a kind of hard laborers’ heaven.

 

Los Angeles, October 14-17, 2009

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (October 2009), originally printed with reviews of On the Waterfront and Norma Rae as

     “It Comes with the Job.”

Reprinted from Reading Films: My International Cinema (Los Angeles: Green Integer, 2012).

 

Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne | Le silence de Lorna (Lorna's Silence) / 2008, released in the US in 2009

the miraculous child

by Douglas Messerli

 

Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (screenplay and directors) Le silence de Lorna (Lorna's Silence) / 2008, released in the US in 2009

 

As I described their work in two films (L'Enfant and La Promesse) in My Year 2004, the Dardenne brothers combine Christian symbolism with current social issues in a manner that is somewhat similar, as Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times suggested, to the work Robert Bresson. And through the lens of immigrants and petty criminals, their work also resonates with the outrageous moral fables of Flannery O'Connor without her veneer of the grotesque.

     In this newest film, Lorna's Silence, two young Albanians, seeking a better life, find their way into the criminal machinations of a petty-mobster, Fabio. To obtain Belgian citizenship, Lorna (the photogenic Arta Dobroshi) has paid, with the help of Fabio and his cohorts, a young junkie, Claudy Moreau (played by the Dardenne regular, Jérémie Renier) to marry her. They have particularly chosen Claudy because of the probability that he will soon die, and Lorna will be free to marry a Russian, for a great deal of money, also desiring to become a citizen of the European Union.

     The movie begins with Lorna depositing money into a savings account and inquiring about a loan. And throughout the movie one of the major actions of these characters, upon which the camera focuses time and again, is financial transactions, not only for daily purchases, but in Claudy's case—who asks that Lorna keep his paltry life savings—to keep his money safe from his drug habit. Both the temporary husband and wife see money as the route to their dreams and needs and are clearly willing to do most anything to obtain it. Lorna and her boyfriend Sokol, the latter of whom works as an itinerant day laborer participating in shady activities related to Fabio and his group, plan to use their money to buy a small food stand, one of the dozens throughout the city of Liège, where the film's action takes place. Claudy, who has been paid to marry her, however, suddenly decides to come clean, with her help, putting all of Fabio's plans in jeopardy.

    Early in the film, Lorna appears quite impenetrable, a woman without sentimentality, willing to do almost anything to achieve her goal. But as Claudy sickens from withdrawal, she is affected by his passionate pleas for help, and gradually awards him some attention, ultimately delivering him over to the hospital for his cure. Now since he will not, apparently, die from his habit, she attempts to get a quick divorce by painfully bruising herself in almost comical runs against doorways and walls to prove that Claudy has beaten her. Her visit to the police station enrages Fabio, however, who now fears the police will suspect something and that it will further delay Lorna's marriage to the Russian.

     Visiting Claudy, she demands that he strike her in the presence of a nurse. But the young man, despite his drug dependence, is a nonviolent being, insisting he would never strike a woman and unable to do so when he tries to enact her plot. It is this basic goodness in him that gradually begins to chip away at Lorna's coldly calculated composure. And when Claudy returns home, she chases the local drug dealer from her house and refuses to give Claudy back his money for a purchase, fighting him to the floor, an encounter that ends with the two engaged in intense sex.   

 

   The divorce decree has come through, but Fabio and the Russian cannot wait. As Lorna returns to her menial day job at a cleaners, Claudy rides away joyfully on his new bicycle, insisting Lorna keep his money in the envelope. In the very next scene, we observe Lorna almost ritualistically folding and packing away his clothing. Claudy, so the police report, has overdosed, which we know was not an act of his own volition.

     Soon after, as Lorna excitedly inspects her and Sokol's new café, she finds herself unable to climb the stairs. It is evident that she is pregnant—with Claudy's child! Her first instinct is the obvious one: she must abort it. But in the Dardennes' films, nothing happens quite like one might expect. At the clinic she panics even before they inspect her body. She bolts from the place, reporting to Fabio that she will have a baby.

     Fabio insists she will have an abortion the next day, but at the meeting with the Russian Lorna is to marry, she dares to ask, through a translator, what he might think if she had a baby. He is outraged, ready to renege on the deal, until Fabio intercedes, insisting that she is not pregnant and will be checked over a doctor as evidence! Later that night, Lorna collapses in painful cramping, and is taken to the doctors, where they declare that, indeed, she is not pregnant, and suggest further tests. A chance encounter with the nurse to whom she had first reported Claudy's beating of her hints to Fabio that she is about to tell the truth. And he rushes her from the hospital, insisting through an intervention with her boyfriend Sokol, that it would be better for her to return to Albania. In the end, both Lorna and Claudy have attempted, but been unable, to resist their own moral values.

     It is only at this point that Lorna truly becomes silent, as a knowing and maternal-like glow suddenly appears upon her face. Forced to return all of her money, with Sokol taking back his portion of their savings, she is left, it appears, with only a few Euros and the money she had hidden away from Claudy, which she now intends to use for the child whom she insists—despite the doctor's proclamation—will soon be born. As an associate of Fabio drives her away, it quickly becomes clear that he is not taking the route to Albania, but driving her to some out of the way spot to kill her.

     Stopping in the woods to pee, she grabs a large rock and, returning to the car, dashes it into the head of her would-be assassin, racing into the woods without a planned destination. Eventually she finds a small shed, which she forces open and in which, after gathering wood, she starts a fire, speaking to her child as she acts, something to the effect of "Perhaps tomorrow we will find a friendly house, where they will feed us. Now we must sleep."

     It is clear that, despite the desperation of her potential fate—she may be seriously ill and is without a single possession—Lorna is determined to live and bare her child. Is she deluded? Gone mad? Possibly. She has, however, clearly been morally redeemed, has seen the error of her life and regretted her actions. Like the mother of Christ, she has had, symbolically, to flee to Egypt. But Lorna must escape even before the child's birth, finding her own stable nonetheless. Miracles, so the Dardennes suggest, are known to happen.

         

Los Angeles, August 9, 2009

Reprinted from Nth Position [England] (August 2009)

Reprinted from Reading Films: My International Cinema (Los Angeles: Green Integer, 2012).

 

Jonny Ruff | Heavy Weight / 2016

ring of terror

by Douglas Messerli

 

Chuku Modu and Jace Moody (screenplay), Jonny Ruff (director) Heavy Weight / 2016 [13 minutes]

 

British director Jonny Ruff’s Heavy Weight is a new contender in the long line of gay boxing movies which can be said to lead back to the early days of talkies from City Lights (1931), Iron Man (1931), Winner Take All (1932), The Sport Parade (1932), Dragnet Girl (1933), Rip Roarin' Buckaroo (1936), L’Air de Paris (1954), and Rocco and His Brothers (1960) among others—as well as those that came after such as the filmed Metropolitan Opera production of Champion in 2023.

 

   Paris (Chuki Modu) is clearly the major fixture at the small boxing club where he works out. But one day, quite surprisingly, a newcomer arrives, Connor (Jace Moody), who changes everything. On his very first spar with Paris, it appears that Connor is lighter on his feet and has a deeper punch. It’s also clear that Paris immediately resents it and is furious about the situation.

     Even warm-up exercises such jumping rope become a contest. Although Paris is already bitter, the two do soon actually meet up after Paris calls him a “Paki” and Connor suggests that “it’s too bad that your legs don’t run as fast as your mouth.”

     The fight manager Gerry (Dean Christie) realizes he’s got something new and good in the place, commenting on Connor’s workout: “Now that is how you punch a bag.”

     The two get on even better after everyone’s left the gym. Connor wonders if Paris could be any fighter he wanted to be, whom might he choose. Paris rather predictably choses Ali, while Connor argues, just as predictably for the Irish. As Connor continues, quite engagingly, to talk nonsense, Paris challenges him to a mock fist fight (without the boxing gloves). They play around in the ring in gentle sparring slaps until as they come into a clinch for a moment, Connor kisses Paris, who immediately pushes him off with a “What the fuck?”

     As Paris storms off Connor cannot quite explain what has come over him. This is, after all, a boxing ring where male on male love is even more unthinkable than in a soccer locker or a football huddle. The ring is square of traditional machoism so intense that it can result in death.

     The next day in a sparring match, indeed, Paris keeps hitting the new boy so hard that the manager has to break them up, asking “You tryin’ to kill to kill him or what?”

    Back in the locker room, Paris is pacing as the now-bloodied Connor arrives. As Connor attempts to move closer to his challenger—clearly recognizing what Paris’ anger is all about—the other keeps pushing him off as Connor continues to aggress, finally pulling Paris by his T-shirt straps toward as the two not only kiss, but hug in near desperation, holding on for dear life as the film goes black.

 

Los Angeles, May 11, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (May 2024).

unknown filmmaker | Icelandic Glacial Water / 2016 [commercial advertisement]

the view

by Douglas Messerli

 

Director unknown Icelandic Glacial Water / 2016 [1.04 minutes] [commercial advertisement]

 

Taking its cue from the famed 1994 Diet Coke commercial wherein hunky construction worker Lucky Vanous sent dozens of female office workers to their windows at the same time every day while he took his Coke break, Icelandic Glacial Water has repeated the trope.

    This time the office building evidently fronts the ocean from which every day at precisely 10:30 a long-haired surfer (model Brock O’Hurn) rises like Poseidon to briefly return to land. On the beach, as the office women watch with noses pressed against the windows, he strips off the top half of his wet suit, pulls out a bottle of Icelandic Glacial Water and swallows down several gulps.

    The only difference from the Coke ad is that among the women watching this muscled god is a gay man who promises his office mate to meet up the same time next day with a most definite gay-inflected “Hm-hmm.”

      No sooner has the ad flashed its logo than we return to the staring women and single gay boy, only to now see the surfer standing behind them, who calmly inquires: “What are you looking at girls?” They all scream, while our gay boy simply keels over in a faint.

    The question arises, accordingly, whether this Poseidon has been noticing their voyeuristic activities for some time now, and we can only wonder that, if so, does that make him a sort of exhibitionist?

 

Los Angeles, May 10, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (May 2024).

 

 

Mark Nickelsburg | Tide to Go / 2015 [fake commercial advertisement]

spotless

by Douglas Messerli

 

Mark Nickelsburg (director) Tide to Go / 2015 [31 seconds] [fake commercial advertisement]

 

In 2015 an ad that seemed to be from an upcoming Proctor & Gamble commercial advertisement made news across the nation.

      In the ad, a gay couple can be seen walking into a church about to be married. But a woman (Lynne Marie Stewart) stands in their way yelling “Offensive,” determined that they won’t dare “blemish the sanctity of marriage.”

      The two begin immediately to protest, but before they can even plead their rights, she has pulled out a Tide to Go “pen” and begins to white-out a stain in one of the men’s shirts. As she quickly makes the stain disappear, he asks his soon-to-be husband why he hadn’t noticed the spot.

      Their savior, meanwhile, having finished her duty, straightens the other man’s bow tie, moves aside and, almost winkingly, says “Carry on boys,” as they move forward to join the priest about to marry them.

      This ad clearly referenced the Rowan County, Kentucky municipal clerk, Kim Davis, who blocked gay marriages in her small town that same year.

      The ad went viral with over 400,000 views on Facebook, and now appears in a collation of Funny Gay Commercials. There is no evidence, however, that Nickelsburg ever succeeded in convincing Tide or Proctor & Gamble to purchase and run the ad. They did, however, produce a 2014 ad in Canada only which appears in my essays about films of that year.

       Tide evidently got this spot for free, leaving the Nickelsburg company Tiny Giant beached on the shores of good intentions.

 

Los Angeles, May 10, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (May 2024).